Ignacy
CZUMA (1891-1963)
Lawyer, politician,
political journalist. B.
Oct. 22, 1891, Niepo³omice. An active member of Catholic Action, Polish Catholic-Peasant
Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Katolicko Ludowe) and Non-Party Block
for the Co-Operation with the Government (Bezpartyjny Blok Wspó³pracy
z Rz¹dem, BBWR). Deputy to the Sejm in the 1930-35 term, member
of the Constituent Commission which created the April Constitution.
His main preoccupation was fiscal policy, although he often took
part in debates on social issues. He published articles in many
periodicals, including Droga, Pr¹d, Przegl¹d Filozoficzny, and Ruch Katolicki. His major
monographs are: "Równowaga bud¿etu na tle prawa bud¿etowego
ró¿nych pañstw" ("Balanced Budget Against the Background
of Budgetary Law in Various Countries", 1924), "Filozoficzne punkty
styczne Zachodu i bolszewizmu" ("Philosophcal Connections Between
the West and Bolshevism", 1930), "Dzisiejsza filozofia sowieckiego
prawa a romantyzm prawniczy" ("Current Philosophy of Soviet Law
and Legal Romanticism", 1930), "Absolutism ustrojowy" ("Constitutional
Absolutism", 1934), "Sprawiedliwość i miłość jako zasady chrześcijańskiego
ustroju państwowego" ("Justice and Love as Principles of a Christian
State Constitution",1937), "Wolnoœæ narodu w pañstwie"
("Freedom of the Nation within the State", 1937), "Polityka ludnoœciowa
III Rzeszy" ("Ethnic Policy in the Third Reich", 1939), "Moralny
koszt wspó³czesnej wojny" ("The Moral Cost of Modern War",
1946). D. April 18, 1963, Lublin.
The selected fragments
are from two texts by Ignacy Czuma: "Dzisiejsza filozofia sowieckiego
prawa a romantyzm prawniczy" ("Current Philosophy of Soviet Law
and Legal Romanticism"), originally published in Pamiêtnik
Literacki, organ of the Lublin Society of Friends of Science
(Towarzystwo Mi³oœników Nauki), reprinted from 1930 facsimile,
Lublin (pp. 22-43); "Bolszewizm" ("Bolshevism"), originally published
in Pr¹d (Feb 1938), reprinted from Bolszewizm (collected articles): Lublin 1938, pp. 96-108.
The Soviet State developed in its structure those elements which in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries had a destructive effect on society
and man, and hence called for their elimination and removal, instead
of making them flourish and prevail. Sovietism accepted these agents
of decay as its own, deemed them worthy of developing even if they
carried with them the most evil and absurd sacrifices and destruction.
Since Tsarist Russia differed as a state from, say, the French Third
Republic in its attitude to religion, the Soviet Union rapidly caught
up by introducing the separation of Church and state, and took further
measures, already implemented in the West. These were: the complete
banishment of God from public life; making the state morally self-sufficient
(the state determines its own morality); banishing God from schools
(the secularization of schools), banishing God from work, banishing
God from the family (civil marriages were made obligatory), sequestering
Church property, sequestering churches, etc. Having caught up with
the West, the Soviet State goes a step further, namely it wrests
God from the human soul, using all of the most criminal methods.
It raises obstacles to renting churches, it spies on religious people
and turns them in, harasses, kills and tortures the clergy, uses
the machinery of the state to promote atheism, or rather a war against
God and religion. After the previous stage effected by European
civilization, that of banishing God from the life of society and
the state, the ultimate step is taken on the way to wrest God from
the human soul.
The Soviet State ceases to be a high-quality good of a separate kind. The
nineteenth century made the state into an instrument of the political
party, of Masonic lodges, of plutocracy; the Soviet State becomes
a weapon of dictatorship which a handful of intelligentsia, with
a high proportion of Jews, inflicts on the multitudinous nations
subject to the Russian State. The state becomes an instrument of
"oppression" - ostensibly used by the dictatorship of the proletariat,
but in fact initially by the dictatorship of the party, but this
also only ostensibly, because it is really a dictatorship of an
oligarchy, and to be more precise, of an individual (Lenin, Stalin).
The dictator and despot puts on a mantle of the dictatorship of
the working class. The Soviet State does not bring people together,
but destroys people and sets them against each other. This state
is not spiritually edifying, but wrecks, kills and smothers. The
role assigned by bolshevism to the state is all the more abominable
that the dismantling and withering away of the state is announced
(Lenin). In the course of events, it becomes more and more evident
that the original phantoms of an amicable, "classless", harmonious
society which rules over things, not people, is becoming an increasingly
bloody irony. The life of the state is then prolonged and ever longer
or indefinite stages are proposed. Forms of government (or at least
their appearances, but appearances can be attractive) are imposed
of which the Soviet State was to be a negation (democracy, free
elections, parliament, constitution, legislative, executive and
judiciary powers, civil rights and obligations, etc.)
The Soviet State does not recognize any moral law above itself, and for
that reason it has to resort, as did the nineteenth century state,
to the only effective defense, which is coercion and violence. Coercion
and violence, the grim daily reality of the Soviet State, elevated
onto the highest plane of human existence, became the primary and
the only foundation of social and national life. Not a spiritual
bond, not a moral bond, but a bloody and savage coercion. Since
the element of a moral goal and a moral order has been bloodily
erased, the will again comes to the fore, amazingly enhanced in
its role, blending with coercion and violence. There are no moral
constraints on coercion and violence. The will has a savage freedom,
exploited and abused, as we can see. The monstrous antics of the
Roman Emperors seem like innocent play against this staggering and
savage license of the will in the Soviet State. Under such circumstances
we should not be surprised by the unbelievable, in their scale,
experiments involving life, blood and terrible sweat as well as
the humiliation and tormenting of human beings. Neither is the playful
will - not tempered by any moral restrictions, having the immense
state coercion at its disposal - constrained by reason, which has
been placed out of immediate view.
The nineteenth century produced a type of head of state for ceremonies
and official acts (touring the country, opening exhibitions, approving
government nominations imposed by the parties, receiving diplomats,
etc.); the Soviet State further reduced this defunct institution.
The collegiate body is the pinnacle of the constitution, while ceremonial
functions are performed by one person from this collegiate body.
The actual supreme power resides elsewhere, as it does in a parliamentary
republic. Thus the facts tell a different story than official pronouncements.
In fact the Soviet State has had a monarchy since 1917 (Lenin),
an absolute monarchy - after the ascendancy of Stalin we are dealing
with a despotic monarchy - in its most perverted and cynical form.
The nineteenth century worked out a whole framework for the art of party
politics. The party is a barrister, well paid because winning the
case means gaining power, but a shameless and exclusive barrister.
Nobody but the party has such a fine understanding of what is good
for the people it represents, nobody but the party has the right
to represent all of society or a portion of it. The party lives
by lying, it promises a lot, delivers little, there are no means
it would not use to stay in power or remove others from power, slandering
its enemies and their actions, glorifying its own people and their
actions. The party created a whole great art of winning and maintaining
trust, it insinuated itself into professional life, local government,
civil offices, often even the courtroom, the army, becoming a cancerous
growth upon these institutions. The Soviet State has arisen from
the party, and the party has been growing fat on the state. Corrupting
the state's moral structure made this task easier. However, the
party is in its turn a springboard for concrete people. Once they
are established with its help, the party becomes, as the state has
done, a passive instrument in their hands. This continues now in
the Soviet State and in every country where the party establishes
itself and becomes ultimately perverted.
The nineteenth century removed God from the state. Thus it took away a
standard for evaluating man, because without God man is an animal
of little worth. Man must be valued on the basis of what he is.
If he is only a transient animal, his value is quite different than
if he is an indestructible, eternal person. Bolshevism adopted the
concept of a dwarfed man that had been prepared for it by others
in the West (materialism, Darwinism, and positivism) and gave this
concept a cruel expression. [...]
Having lost its moral bearings, the state itself creates morality. What
kind of morality? The exploitation by the capitalist "mogul" and
his ruthlessness, the "iron" economic laws of the nineteenth century,
so blatantly directed against the dignity, value, agency and personality
of the human being, are trifles when compared with this cruel exploitation
of man, worker and peasant by the employer state. The economic bondage
under capitalism has been transformed into an economic and feudal
bondage under the Soviet State (collectivization, the Stakhanovite
system, and so on). Social justice, maltreated already in the nineteenth
century state, vanishes completely in the Soviet State. For when
he turns his back on God and His Laws, man loses the awareness of
what is right and what is wrong. Love among human beings owes its
essential character and value to the love of God and it is in God
that it seeks its surest measure and touchstone. Where there is
no love, hate, the symbol of the Soviet State, flourishes.
Banishing God from the life of society and of individual human beings,
the Soviet State loses its bearings in the order of human values.
For the same reason the nineteenth century already brought material
values to the fore. The Soviet State will go further along this
path. The people are pointed to material things as the foremost
value and aim in life.
The Soviet State does not recognize the broad range of autonomous goods:
love of God for humans, love of one's country (recently enjoying
a comeback), love of one's family, etc. For the materialist orientation
leads to the mechanization and standardization of social life, it
produces a homogenization of social phenomena or, to use a Nazi
term, their Gleichschaltung.
The world has got used to the fact that lying has become so rampant in
public life. However, we have learned to decipher the truth which
with some effort can be glimpsed behind the catch phrases; "democracy",
"will of the people", "struggle for peace", and so on, these attractive
embellishments hiding the unpleasant and painful truth. Yet there
is no other country in the world where lying is so deeply and consistently
ingrained in every act as in the Soviet Union. The Soviet State
is erected on the framework of these outraging falsehoods. Let us
review some of the major ones.
"The workers', peasants' [and others'] soviets constitute the political
foundation of the Soviet Union". In fact these soviets do not have
any real importance, except as a facade. "All power belongs to the
working class". In fact the so-called working class has no influence
whatsoever on power. In the Bolshevik State the bureaucratic and
party apparatus has always held the power in all its expressions,
and now this apparatus is thoroughly corrupt and depraved. Instructions
issue from the dictator above and on their way down they are executed
in utmost fear and utmost uncertainty whether they are effected
in accordance with the wishes of the despot - who is compared to
the "sun" and to a true demigod. "The exploitation of man by man
has been eradicated". In fact, that which was called "exploitation"
before the revolution was incommensurable with what is now called
the "eradication of exploitation", and we should find a different
term for the former, the latter being the most cruel "exploitation"
in the accepted sense of the word. This does not mean that the "exploitation"
of one man by another has been replaced by exploitation of man by
the state, for in the Soviet Union we have both these forms of exploitation.
Rather, this means that pre-Revolutionary injustice constitutes
but a pale and small beginning of the cruel injustice, the cruel
exploitation now inflicted upon man in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet State is a "voluntary association of Soviet republics". History
has seen various atrocities connected with subduing peoples, but
if has rarely been witness to such artful tormenting of the conquered
populations as we can observe in the Soviet Union. We may add to
this the principle upheld by all Soviet constitutions hitherto:
"Every republic is free to withdraw from the Soviet Union". Upon
my word! Explaining the articles of the proposed constitution, Stalin
expressly proclaimed that the right to withdraw from the Soviet
Union should be maintained, but only with regard to those republics
which border with other states, and therefore can put their right
of withdrawal into physical, geographic effect. If offered the occasion,
the republics will surely take advantage of this right, even if
it does not exist! Every Soviet citizen knows this. But now the
clause about the right of withdrawal is included only in order to
confuse and stupefy the naive outside Russia, and there are still
many of them in this world, because it is not easy to accept that
falsehood and fraud could have assumed such proportions. All these
falsehoods and frauds perpetrated by the Soviet Union have the aim
of persuading not the Soviet subjects, because after twenty years
they are able to see through the mendacious slogans, but the foreign
public. "The sovereignty of the Soviet republics" is also a lie!
Yet how nicely it sounds to the naive and to fools! Not only can
there be no talk of sovereignty, but the republics would be greatly
relieved if they were awarded even a modest degree of local government:
compared to the current sophisticated centralism it would bring
some alleviation and ease. "The government is nominated in a joint
session of both chambers of the Supreme Council (article 56 of Stalin's
constitution). We know that in the Western systems which emerged
in the nineteenth century the nomination of the government by the
head of state is only a formality in relation to the pressure exerted
by the right of the parliamentary majority. If a constitutional
lie is committed by Western civilization, why should the Russian
constitution not resort to it? The Soviet dictator designates the
government! Yet again they wanted to pull the wool over the eyes
of the West! Behold! In your system it is only a matter of convention
that the parliamentary majority designates the government, while
in the Soviet State this power was vested in the "parliament" by
the constitution. Article 52 of Stalin's constitution also creates
"immunity" of the representative. The Soviet "representative" could
invoke this immunity. "The judges are independent and subject only
to the law" (article 25). The cruel and bloody irony of the Soviet
judiciary! "Freedom of conscience" (article 124 of Stalin's constitution).
Yes, that is what it says! This freedom of conscience has already
cost rivers of blood. "In order to secure the citizens' freedom
of conscience, the church in the USSR is separated from the state,
and the schools from the church. Each citizen has the freedom of
religious worship and the freedom of anti-religious propaganda".
What does this clause say to the states of Western civilization?
We are only doing what you have been doing for a long time! We separate
the church from the state, as you have done, we separate the schools
from the church, as you are doing, we grant freedom of anti-religious
propaganda, as you do. Nothing more! This invoking the father by
the child is very characteristic. I am doing what you have been
doing for a long time, so this must be right, since you have been
doing it for so long and are happy with yourself, therefore allow
me to be happy with myself and you should be satisfied with me.
Of course, the Soviet Union does not, in fact, recognize the freedom
of conscience.
It has been noted that these outrageous lies are committed in order to
cement the "popular fronts". There is some political truth in it,
but we are concerned with a different kind of truth. "Popular fronts"
are held together, despite enormous discrepancies in political culture
and norms of personal conduct, by one common harmonizing factor.
"Popular fronts" are joined by forces which wage either open, or
a secret and covert war against God, and aim at liberating the human
community from the shackles of God's Law and morality. This bond
is much stronger than differences in nationality, than differences
in political outlook, than differences in material standards and
intellectual development. Thanks to his hatred of God and God's
Law, a French freemason, though a rich "bourgeois" entrepreneur
and rentier, is closer
to the Bolshevik than his wealth, lifestyle and nationality would
suggest. Of course, all the more closer to bolshevism are socialist
parties, which share its hatred of God and the Church, although
for opportunistic reasons they do not yet exhibit it too openly
in public, as bolshevism does at home, though outside it is recently
trying deceitfully to lure even Catholics. This is the only essential
and true explanation of the astonishing affiliations and friendly
relations of bolshevism with "bourgeois" elements in the West.
Hatred of God, of the higher moral order, is stronger than barriers of
station, nationality, culture, politics, etc. We should bear this
in mind and not look for explanations where no essential explanations
can be found.
The imitation of Western standards by the Soviet State is evident in Stalin's
constitution, especially in the clauses about "freedom of conscience".
The son invoking the father! Where he cannot do it sincerely, he
does it disingenuously, but still he does it. For when the father
lives a life that the son is proposing to live, the son wants to
shift the burden of responsibility on the father by adopting his
program. However, there is one more possibility. In its new constitution
the Soviet State expressed the wish to retreat at least to the point
from which it started, imitating the Western-European state in its
bad traits. This constitutes a tacit acknowledgment that this retreat,
were it achievable, is worth attaining.
"Freedom of speech", "freedom of the press", "freedom of association",
of "rallies", "marches", "habeas corpus", "secrecy of correspondence",
all these so shamelessly mock the reality of the Soviet State that
we cry out in astonishment: Is it possible that such perverse falsehoods
and lies could be pronounced when the Soviet man is afraid of his
own shadow, when he cannot find a minute's shelter where he would
be at least slightly more at rest and free?
The horror of this state frightens its creators. Perhaps they would prefer
to reverse what they have done. However, it is too late. The "making"
of the constitution is followed by the mass murder of former friends.
God punishes the criminals with their own hands. They shed the last
vestiges of human dignity before they are executed. They make themselves
into "traitors of the people", "enemies of the people", "spies",
"vile renegades". The Soviet State, which grew upon the utmost degradation,
degrades its creators by inflicting upon them the death of traitors
and social outcasts, accusing them of being sophisticated murderers,
which they unfortunately are. "In the harshest human codes of law
one cannot find sufficient punishment for the Moscow clique and
above all for its leader", writes Trotsky. Let us include Trotsky
among the unpunished and then these words will be quite precise.
The process of God's punishment will continue, and if we live long
enough, we will see it with our own eyes. This terrible betrayal
of God, this brazen and impudent offending God which was begun by
the decaying part of the West, and is now completed by bolshevism,
freeing the state from its subjection to God's Law, cannot go unpunished!
Unless Western civilization turns back from this wicked road of
betrayal and whole-heartedly returns to God, it will step by step
enter its own destruction, just as a large portion of mankind, subject
to the Soviet State, is being destroyed.